No one was prepared for such an emotional farewell. Saturday in Symphony Hall, Sir Donald Runnicles led his final performance as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor, a position he took some 23 years ago. After a double-fortissimo roar for their Mahler Fifth Symphony and, even after several curtain calls, the audience wouldn’t let…
The magnificent, sea-farin’ A Sea Symphony is the sort of choral rarity that the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus were born to deliver. Ralph Vaughan Williams, an English composer drawn to bold gestures and bucolic simplicity, set poetry by the rough and boundless Walt Whitman, a perpetual free agent of the American language, an echt-American…
Spivey Hall’s 33rd season continues the jewel-box recital hall’s reputation for hosting top international musicians in classical, jazz and world music. The season opens in the fall with pianist Inon Barnatan (September 24) and a female vocal group from Zimbabwe called Nobuntu (October 13). It reaches a winter midpoint with star soprano Sondra Radvanovsky (January…
It’s a busy time for conductor Nathalie Stutzmann. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s music director, still surfing the first wave of her remarkable career ascent, is making prestigious debuts all over. She is in rehearsals at the Metropolitan Opera for her company debut conducting two Mozart operas: Don Giovanni (opening May 5) and The Magic Flute…
Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, from the 1830s, is a party piece for the concert hall. It’s a narrative, in music, about a callow youth who falls in love from afar, with dreamy visions of his beloved at a bejeweled ball and promenading in the verdant countryside. At first it seems to be love in the…
A major new singer has arrived on the scene. Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, still building a career, made her Spivey Hall debut Sunday afternoon. The fragrant beauty of her voice, the range of her skillset and the intuitive intelligence of her interpretations tell us she’s becoming an artist of the highest caliber. She delivered Romantic art…
The formidable Russian-born Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, in recital Sunday afternoon at Spivey Hall, offered music by two contrasting composers but with one approach to playing: bold, muscular and sharply etched. Dapper in a black suit, white shirt and red necktie, with a white hankie peeking from his breast pocket, Giltburg sounded old school, where…
Belatedly, Jerry Hou is on the fast track. He started as a professional trombonist, but turned to conducting after his instrumental career was ended by injury. In 2020, he joined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as associate conductor and has received a title upgrade to “resident” conductor. Although he lives in Houston with his wife and…
Someone falls ill; the whole show has to change. Sunday afternoon at Spivey Hall, the Catalyst Quartet arrived for a program devoted to undervalued Black composers, including sophisticated spiritual arrangements by the always-engaging Florence Price. Not least, Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, was billed as the concert’s headliner, joining the Catalyst…
We’re still living in complicated times and Symphony Hall, by a long shot, isn’t a haven of musical escapism. At Thursday’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert, everyone on stage who wasn’t blowing into an instrument wore a pandemic mask — all the strings and percussion and the keyboard and harps and even stagehands and guest conductor…
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